Melbourne priest Fr Greg Trythall has celebrated 1500 consecutive Sunday open-water swims. Source: Melbourne Catholic.
Current and former parishioners, open-water swimming friends, and onlookers cheered as the Williamstown parish priest tore through a special “1500” banner before splashing into the cold waters of Port Phillip Bay on August 18.
Fr Trythall has enjoyed open-water swimming for the past 30 years. He says this habit has improved his overall health and well-being and his role as a priest.
Growing up in Footscray, in the west of Melbourne, his parents would often take him to Williamstown Beach in the summer months. Now, many years later, Fr Greg is pleased that it was the location for his momentous 1500th consecutive Sunday swim.
Two days later, on August 20, Fr Trythall celebrated 47 years as a priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese.
Fr Trythall says he’s been “so lucky” to have ministered in parishes close to the ocean for much of his priestly life. However, he credits his current open-water swimming habit and achievement to a trip to Byron Bay, NSW.
“During some prayer time in Byron Bay, with great insight I believe from the Holy Spirit, I decided to go back to doing some more ardent running and swimming—I was in my late 40s at the time,” he said.
He started this new habit on the second Sunday of November in 1994.
In the years that followed, Fr Trythall remained committed to his consecutive Sunday swims.
“It was not mainly about my own self-discipline, but more in religious terms, God’s Holy Spirit leading me down a personal path which would have been madness for me not to follow, as I have discovered over the years.
“I always swim early in the morning so that I can get back in time to have breakfast, then have a time of prayer, hopefully up to an hour before Mass; that then sets me up for all sorts of things in my normal work day.”
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Fr Greg Trythall celebrates 1500 consecutive Sunday swims (By Fiona Basile, Melbourne Catholic)
